Tag Archives: Moscow

In a recent Metro poster advertising campaign across Europe designed to encourage tourists to visit Moscow, the authoritarians may have just shot each other in the foot, or is that feet?

The poster in question showed a typical Moscow morning scene with a bit of pre-rush hour traffic, some domes, places of cultural interest, a river and oh! Of course a bit of green. You know the sort of “Come on! What are you waiting for? Visit us, it’s a nice place,” poster that is produced by every tourist board in every city for their countries and capitals.

Unfortunately the ex-comrades decided to take this particular aerial picture just before the Moscow pollution smog came up in the afternoon, or it might have been that the light was ‘right’ and the photographer was a perfectionist! Who knows? What we do know is that when they took the picture they obviously didn’t notice a convoy of military vehicles was pootling along the road next to the Moscow River, maybe it just happens so often that they didn’t think that sort of thing was unusual.

If they had known/cared/noticed etc., they might have waited ten or fifteen minutes so that the convoy of lorries carrying missiles armed with nuclear warheads wasn’t in their shot!

Oh sorry did I forget to mention that the line of traffic (shown in the enlargement below) was carrying enough missiles armed with nuclear warheads, through the sunny centre of Moscow, to blow more than the skin of everyone’s rice pudding in the entire world – or definitely do that to the people that ‘The Put’ doesn’t like or agree with, a list that gets longer by the day!

Mind you if you really want to frighten the children show them the picture below.

Ok look away I beg you before you turn to salt sometime in advance of you becoming just an unfortunate casualty in a nuclear ‘conflict’ (as they call ‘wars’ these days) and get turned to salt anyway.

About the Author

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

I am sorry if the title of this blog causes any alarm or confusion, the reason for the alarm is obvious but the confusion might come from the title itself “Look what I saw crossing Red Square last night.” I was in fact crossing Red Square as well as the Rocket on the transporter and the title may suggest that only one of us, the bigger one was!

Now you have to agree, unless you are like Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Tony Blair and Colin Powell very impressed by Weapons of Mass Destruction or WMD (which oddly enough like the names of the people mentioned here we don’t hear much about these days), you have to feel just a touch of panic when a beast carrying enough explosives to ruin breakfast in half of anyone’s continent comes trundling towards you in what is I thought a tourist spot.Especially when the driver of the behemoth can’t see where he is going because the Russians spent all of their money on the rocket and almost nothing on the headlights!

I did panicking proud as I raced between the wheels of this trundling monster and headed back towards my hotel at approximately the same speed as the rocket the transporter was um… transporting could do if some idiot in a concrete silo somewhere pressed the red button.

After I dived into the hotel and the fuss of me being ‘missing’ was over, to take my mind off the episode my hosts asked me if there was anything I would like to see while I was in “Mother Russia?” I was probably still thinking about my earlier encounter with the big beast crossing Red Square and so I asked, quite reasonably I thought, to have a look at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome and that I have to say caused quite a storm.

Apparently and this is between me, and the hundreds of thousands of people who read my blog of course, and so confidentially ‘safe’ as MI5 call it, my ‘minders’ as they liked to call themselves when they thought I wasn’t listening didn’t like that little cracker of an idea one bit and seemed more miffed than they usually were.

Later I worked out that mentioning the Plesetsk Cosmodrome was not good form because just a month ago a former chief test engineer called Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Nesterets from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome had admitted selling top secret data on Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles to America… whoops! And had been sentenced to 13 years in a Russian clink.

Well all I can say is I hope that the Americans paid him a lot of money for his secrets because let’s face it the hotels in Russia are like prisons so what, you have to ask, are the prisons like?

Sadly my request was turned down. The official reason being that the Rocket Base was just too far North and the unofficial reason was that my FSB (exKGB) (I never realised that letters could be so dangerous) minders thought that I was a rotten furry capitalist pig spy working for any number of imperialists governments.

I have always thought that it was strange that the Russians back in the old cold days thought of us westerners as ‘imperialists’ and not themselves as their empire stretched farther than even Gary Power’s spy plane could see from the ‘stans to Poland and everything in-between. The ‘stand’ are of course Uzbekistan, Kazakstan and the rest which are all really rather Stinkystans if you ask me!

So I have a feeling based on last night that my visit to Russia is going to be truncated which is probably best for both parties though the seafood is excellent it doesn’t compensate for either the weather or the lack of jolly company I even miss that great oaf John Woodcock my translator believe it or not and I thought a trip away from that fool would be wonderful, it just goes to show that even Cats can be wrong.

Mind you and as always I have found the people who have attended my book ‘pawings’ (or signings if you prefer) to be wonderful, happy and smiley and all of them to any Olga or any Vlad have patted me on the head, bashed me with their designer watches or gold bracelets the size of a small cars and thanked me for a book that I have recently realised they won’t be able to read.

Between you and me rather too many have been moved to kiss me on the cheeks in spite of my fishy breath which is probably more fishy than usual as I keep a pot of Caviar next to me while squeezing the flesh and glad pawing the punters.

Amazingly I have become a fashion icon and my book “Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary” a ‘must have’ for the rich and stupid. Just like Hugo Boss, Giorgio Armani and all of the great confidence trickiest of the age I have become iconic in my case a literary icon, but still one an icon that can move vast amounts of ‘product.’

Outside the shops I have been to in Moscow my personally ‘pawed’ books have been changing hands for hundreds of thousands in hard currency, footballer style Bentleys, Lamborghinis and other Richmobiles turn up at the kerb and flunkies who have queued all night hand over my book wearing gloves to excited Oligarchs and their trophy wives.

It’s incredible, though I am not complaining, what people will do when they are told or there is some sort of viral rumour that something is “wonderful” even though they might not see it themselves. But then that’s how fashion works isn’t it, a couture house gives one or more fools some of their frocks and the next thing you know everyone wants one, and it works even better if those fools happen to have found themselves (by accident surely) on the Time Magazine 100 most influential people in the world just because one of them married a British Royal and the other is her sister. I ask you what is the world coming to when out of all the influential people in the world who actually have meaning and influence their are two such airheads on a list like that?

Mmh I wonder who it was who posted this picture on a lot of Russian website of Middletons with a copy of my book in the hand of the newly wed? It seems as though someone has perpetrated a terrible ruse – or should that read terribly successful ruse still fools are easily parted with their money and no one said that Russians Oligarchs are intelligent did they? They are just friends with the more than dreadful Pres Put…

Of course I wouldn’t want to use President Putin’s name in full here use in case their are reprisals I don’t fancy being prodded up the bum with a poisoned umbrella by one of his ex-KGB pals as I mind my own business being wonderful and famous do I?

About the Author

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

If you ever go to Tallinn in Estonia you are going to be in for a really treat; if you like old, clean, uncrowded cities with lots of bars, cafés, friendly locals and places to see and it is as pretty in the Winter (picture below) as it is in the Summer (the picture of which you will have to look at on line – what do you think this is? A tourist information site? I think not!).

It’s easy to get around in Estonia too if you want to visit not only cities in Estonia but also Russia if you feel brave enough to venture into Putinistan there are direct train routes to Moscow and a new one to St Petersburg the place that has to own up to being the birthplace of the great Put the Election Rigger.

There is only one small problem with train travel in Estonia and that is that it is very likely that you will get misled by the timetable, it isn’t deliberate you understand it is just a national custom!

About the Author – The Cat who writes blogs!

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

Ok I know that I have been “out of the loop,” as they say for a short while. I am sure that you have noticed that your favourite Cat who writes blogs and more has been missing from the internet, not making a single Tweet on Twitter.com and unable to perform even the most basic computerised chore – but I have a great excuse.

To write my masterpieces of Feline Literature, compose wonderful award winning blogs and generally get in most people’s way electronically, I use an Apple Computer, I have used one for years, but I don’t want all of my wonderful cuddly readers to think that I am a computer bore on top of all of the other subjects which I can, and do, bore them with, so I won’t go into just how long I have been a Apple user or at the heartbreak caused by being left out of Steve Jobs Biography completely! But that is another story for another blog I fear.

Right now I want to tell you of the awful problem that I have spent the weekend trying to resolve with my Computer Boffins here at Cat World HQ.

Trying not to sound too dramatic (of course and failing) all I can say is that I have been attacked by a Lion.

The Lion took the form of a so called ‘operating system.’ In fact I spent most of the weekend trying to fix all sorts of madness and confusion that installing Mac OSX Lion caused.

From watching my mouse pointer go backwards to my zippy computer being reduced to the pace of Dave the Cat on a stroll – I probably have to explain here that Dave the Cat hates walking, and even strolling for that matter, I personally think it has a lot to do with the bobble hat, it covers his eyes as you will know if you are a regular reader and if you aren’t I’m not going to help you here, you’ll just delve into my archives and find out the connection for yourself. It’s enough to say that I think I have seen twigs walk faster than Dave the Cat if you ever a manage to trick him into a walk.

There are loads of problems, as I discovered, with Mac OSX Lion and they are all to disappointing and frustrating to mention here frankly, but I will say this I used to love Apple…

Still I think I have managed to sort out most of the problems with the help of my light-fingered boffins – not they aren’t that clever with their hands to be called ‘light-fingered’ the description comes from their habit of pocketing all of my nice little screwdrivers, pens and pencils, still what can you do? As I explain in the book I am writing at the moment which has the working title of ‘The Cat’s Memoir’ (so that you know who wrote it) getting ‘help’ that is useful is practically impossible.

Still to cut a story that seems to be getting longer short when I finished downloading Mac OSX Lion it was very unstable now it is just simply terrible.

I can’t think where I went wrong with Mac OSX Lion! Like an sensible computer user of long standing I am not an early adopter I let other fools rush in and watch their tears at leisure.

Unfortunately I needed to upgrade from the wonderfully cool Snow Leopard to Lion because I wanted to be part of the iPhone,iPod, iPad ‘app’ development process for an ‘app’ that the boffins and I have decided you my dear cuddly readers need and so I had to upgrade to Mac OSX Lion so that I could use the latest app development software.

Mistakenly, but confidently (at the time), I thought that as Lion was on its 10.7.2 incarnation it would be “a-okay” as they say when things are um ‘ok’ I suppose.

Grudingly I paid my real hard earned folding stuff to get a virtual product and like you, I am sure, felt cheated from the moment I watched with a tear rolling down my furry cheek the sum disappear from my bank account electronically, it’s amazing just how that happens, if we tried getting cash in the same way at night I bet we’d fail.

Lion OSX 10.7.2 arrived and I have to say, at the time, I was excited I have rather enjoyed the ‘Cat’ series of Apple Operating Systems and still get excited at the tantalising prospect that the final and ultimate incarnation of this (till now) amazing product could be ‘The Cat OSX’ with a picture of you know who on the box, cover or downloading badge.

Isn’t that picture wonderful? I think so and I am confident that with the final Cat representing the Mac OSX being me The Cat, Apple will go from a company doing quite well to one that is unbelievably successful, but sadly I think we are digressing here, my time like Apple’s will come.

Lion arrived and what can I say? Maybe it should have arrived with a notice like this one from San Diego Zoo……….

Actually I have to say that Mac OSX Lion arrived reasonably quickly thanks to the Czech republic considering that fast broadband was something that would not only prove to be ‘handy’ for everyone but also would help business.

Unlike some backward countries like oh say for instance Cameronland, the island that is now totally isolated from Europe and soon to be free from Scotland and Ireland with any luck but not if the Chief can help it which of course means that it will happen very soon now.

Isn’t it odd that the Chief of Cameronland wants to stick with the ‘Micks’ and the ‘Jocks’ and have nothing to do with the other “Johnny foreigners” in Europe as I believe he calls them.

Still I suppose you can’t moan too much about idiots like the Chief of Cameronland who at least has been elected fairly. Unlike the Gremlin in The Kremlin who at long last has been seen for what he is by the Russian People – I am taking bets that ‘Putin the Bootin’ will be the next thing the hamfisted government will do in ‘free’ Russia, then there will be a ‘Moscow Winter’ followed by a ‘Russian Spring’ and he will be out of the game completely by the ‘Russian Federation Fall.’

Oops did I say we were veering off the point – sorry we have done that again but there is so much going on and without a computer that was working properly thanks to Mac OSX Lion I haven’t been able to see any news, talk to anyone and do all of the rest of the stuff that you expect to be able to do these days.

Now if only I could get the snow to work on my home page once again I would be a happy Cat, but I probably won’t be happy until ! am free from a certain Lion which seems to have its paw on my head all the time!

About the Author

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Cat kind, his sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

Although Russia and in particular Moscow is a tamer, more civilized place when compared to twenty years ago it’s a wild and dangerous place compared to America or England which have their moments of course.

But in either America or England you won’t find any personal physical threats in advertising, especially food advertising. The dreadful ‘love story’ coffee commercials on both side of the Atlantic come to mind here.

No one in New York or London is going to grab you by the collar and tell you to explore the taste of America or England – that as you can see from the shop window advert below is not the case in Moscow.

“Has the Cat got your tongue?” Is like all of those humans expressions about Cats it casts Cats in the role of villain and quite frankly not at all nice.

Why is it that Cats have such a bad reputation when it comes to old sayings or expressions? It is something I have puzzled about when sitting very comfortably and warmly on various human laps and knees recently as apparently the flood water in Central Europe gets deeper and Poland, Hungary and the Czech republic start to drown, but back to that later.

Honestly I have no idea why Cats have such a bad reputation and would be interested to hear from any reader why they think it is the case! Apart, of course, from the reader who asked me why I hadn’t written a blog for a few days and they, in turn, hadn’t had anything funny to read.

Well I replied to them that they really ought to read my book of course book which anyone can easily get here at Amazon.com as if you all need reminding tee hee, and I also let them into a bit of a secret and that is that everyone will soon be able to read my wonderful book on a Sony eReader because those nice people at Sony and this wonderful Cat are going to start ‘bundling’ my amazing ebook with their cute eReader so that you can all buy them as a set if you see what I mean – do contact me for details.

Still the note from my fan did make me think about the phrase “Has the Cat got your tongue?” though, and I thought that I would share those thoughts with you below.

1. What would a Cat do with your tongue or indeed anyone else’s tongue – make a tongue necklace? I hardly
think so!
2. Where would we keep all of the tongues we collect? We don’t have pockets you know, or if we do I have never found mine!
3. Old sayings are as mental as the people who use them.
3. Couldn’t really think of a third point.
3. I think I am a little confused with the numbering system here and anyway I am getting bored with this
list.
4. Dropped off for a while until I was woken up by someone standing up and me falling on my feet (of course).
5. Why do humans stand up unexpectedly when a warm Cat is comfortably asleep on their lap?
6. I may have lost my train of thought and veered off the subject I was thinking about!
7. What was the subject?
8. What am I doing here.
9. Does existentialism have any relevance to the modern feline.
10 My head hurts!

It is so unlikely that a Cat and this cat in particular would want to steal a human tongue that I had to commission an artist to show a Cat stealing a tongue.

One last thing before I go off to find a lap and have a well deserved sleep. The weather here has been pretty terrible recently ‘but’ and it is a very big but just as the idea that Cat’s collect tongues is a myth so is the ‘fact’ reported by the BBC News that the Czech republic, Poland and Hungary are flooded – they aren’t I promise you, so please stop if you were reaching for the inflatable life raft catalogue and wondering if they deliver to Prague. Prague and the surrounding countryside is as dry as a bone, or it was a couple of days ago when I flew over it on my way back from Moscow – the Russian bless them are buying my book now.

Not only that currently I am looking out over Prague from the largest film studios in Europe on a hill above Prague where I can see for miles or kilometres as they say here and I can’t see a drop of water that isn’t in the place it should be ie., the Vltava river which flows, usually in an orderly fashion, through Prague and then down to Slovakia where it is given a new name and eventually ends up in the sea somewhere.